Paul Kriwaczek begins this illuminating and immensely
pleasurable chronicle of Yiddish civilization during the Roman
empire, when Jewish culture first spread to Europe. We see the
burgeoning exile population disperse, as its notable diplomats,
artists and thinkers make their mark in far-flung cities and found
a self-governing Yiddish world. By its late-medieval heyday, this
economically successful, intellectually adventurous, and self-aware
society stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Kriwaczek
traces, too, the slow decline of Yiddish culture in Europe and
Russia, and highlights fresh offshoots in the New World.Combining
family anecdote, travelogue, original research, and a keen
understanding of Yiddish art and literature, Kriwaczek gives us an
exceptional portrait of a culture which, though nearly
extinguished, has an influential radiance still.
關於作者:
Paul Kriwaczek was born in Vienna in 1937 and, with his parents,
narrowly escaped the Nazis in 1939, fleeing first to Switzerland
and then to England. He grew up in London and graduated from London
Hospital Medical College. After several years spent working and
traveling in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, he joined
the BBC, where he spent the next quarter of a century as a program
producer and filmmaker. Since leaving television in the 1990s, he
has devoted himself to writing full-time, catching up on the
unfinished business of a life spent exploring places, times, and
ideas. He is married and lives in London.